Re: How to use a DLL in source safe in another project   

Add the DLL project into your solution.  So your solution will contain
everything it already does, plus the DLL project.  Your other project
that needs the DLL should have a reference to the DLL project.

But, nothing in Visual Studio will force a checkout when you build.
You'll just need to make sure you do a "Get Latest" on the DLL
project.  You'll add a reference to the DLL in your other project in
the solution that needs the DLL.  When you build your solution, Visual
Studio will compile the DLL first, (if the compiled DLL is older than
the source you have on your machine), then it will copy that DLL to
your other project.  It will NOT check out the DLL nor will it "Get
Latest" during the build process.  Note that there's no reason to
check out the DLL... just do a "Get Latest".  You should not check out
code that you're not going to edit.

Visual Studio gives you the ability to add custom pre and post build
code, so maybe you could use that feature to get the latest out of
VSS.  You'll need to use some kind of a VSS API.  I can't help you
there, other than to tell you there IS a VSS API.

Though, in most cases, people don't need the latest from VSS every
time they build.  Just when they get started in the day or even just
when they get started on a project.  Unless someone else is actively
making changes to that DLL and constantly checking them in throughout
the day, you probably don't need to do a get latest every time you
build your other project.  You probably just need to get the latest
once, then never bother again until you've been informed that someone
updated it.

Also, depending on what you're doing, it may be that you don't even
need the source code to the DLL.  We've got lots of projects that use
DLLs from other projects, but we don't need the source... just the
DLL.  In that case, we have an official network share where we place
the latest and greatest build of our DLLs and all of our projects
reference that share, so we always have the latest and never, ever
have to put any effort into it.  When we build our local projects,
Visual Studio automatically goes to the share and copies what's there,
if it's newer. VSS isn't even involved in the process.

Hope that helps!
--------------------------
Owner/Operator of
www.MichaelsAttic.com

On Oct 1, 10:55 am, ssg31415926  wrote:
> I've written a DLL and now I want to use it in another project but I
> want to get the latest version automatically.  How can I do this?  I'm
> fairly new to SourceSafe.
>
> I have a Visual Studio solution which is in a Source Safe project.  I
> can only test the DLL it creates on particular devices (it calls into
> Lotus Notes so tests have to be on my test Notes system).
>
> As soon as I've done a test, I want to put it into my dev system, so I
> need the DLL in my web service project.  At the moment, the web
> service project isn't in source safe.
>
> How can I change it so that the web service pulls the latest version
> of the DLL from source safe when I build it?

date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:55:31 -0700   author:   Mike